JUSTICES, LORDS. Our kings have been, ever since the Conquest, in the habit of appointing, as occasion required, one or more persons to act for a time as their substitutes in the supreme government either of the whole kingdom or of a part of it. When William I. returned to Normandy, the year after the Conquest, he left his half-brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, and William Fitzherbert, to be Custodes Regni, or guardians of the realm, during his absence ; and similar appointments were very frequent under the early Norman and Plantagenet kings. Down to the present time, indeed, similar officers have been appointed under various names, and with more or less extensive powers according to circumstances. Protector, lieutenant, or locum tenens, and regent, have been among the other names by which they have been known. Regents and councils of regency, during the nonage of the king or queen, have been sometimes named by the preceding possessor of the crown ; but in modern times such arrangements have been usually made by statute. Coke remarks (4 'Inst.' 58) that the methods of appointing a guardian or regent have been •so various, that "the surest way is to have him made by authority of the great council in parliament." The most familiar case of the appointment by the crown of a repre sentative to exercise the supreme executive power, not in a colony or dependency, Is that of the appointment of the lord-lieutenant of Ireland, or of a council of government composed of lords justices.
The governor-general of Ireland under the crown has been styled at different times custos (keeper or guardian), justiciary, warden, procu rator, seneschal, constable, justice, deputy, and lieutenant. Viceroy is a name of modern introduction. Formerly, upon the avoidauce of the office by death or otherwise, the privy council there was authorised to elect a successor, with the restriction that he should be an Englishman and no spiritual person, who held office till the kiug appointed another. The ancient powers of this officer were almost regal ; he performed every act of government without any previous communication with England ; and when he left the country be even. appointed his own deputy. From the Revolution, however, till the
reign of George III., the lord-lieutenant resided very little in Ireland ; in several instances the person appointed to the office never went over ; in other cases he went over once in two years to hold the session of parliament; and the government was very often left in the hands of lords justices, without a lord-lieutenant at all. In modern times the appointment of lords justices for Ireland has only taken place on the occasional absences of the lord-lieutenant ; and the lords justices have usually been the lord primate, the lord chancellor, and the commander of the forces.
In England lords justices and regents have been repeatedly appointed since the Revolution, on occasion of the king going abroad ; and the appointment has usually, if not always, been made by letters patent, in the same manner as the lords-lieutenant or lords justices of Ireland have always been appointed. In some cases, however, the aid of par liament has been called in for certain purposes. When King William went over to Ireland, in 1689, he of his own authority appointed the administration of the government to be In the hands of the queen during his absence out of the kingdom, by declaration at the council table ; and at the same time an act was passed, 1 and 2 W. & M., s. 2, in the preamble of which his majesty's pleasure was recited, and it was enacted, that whensoever his majesty should be absent, it should be lawful for the queen to administer the regal power and government. This act was considered to be necessary, in consequence of the peculiar circumstances in which the queen was placed by the Act of Settlement, which had declared that the entire, perfect, and full exercise of the regal power and government should be only in and executed by his majesty in the names of both their majesties during their joint lives. It was at the same time provided, "That as often as his majesty shall return into this kingdom of England, the sole administration of the regal power and government thereof shall be in his majesty only, as if this act had never been made." After the queen's death lords justices were repeatedly appointed by the king.